Some still seeking revenge in Libya

Monday

Feb 18, 2013 at 12:01 AMFeb 18, 2013 at 11:41 AM

BENGHAZI, Libya - Col. Faraj el-Dersi, who defected to the rebel side from Moammar Gadhafi's police force, was gunned down late last year on the streets of Benghazi, and he bled to death in the arms of his teenage daughter.

BENGHAZI, Libya — Col. Faraj el-Dersi, who defected to the rebel side from Moammar Gadhafi’s police force, was gunned down late last year on the streets of Benghazi, and he bled to death in the arms of his teenage daughter.

As Libya yesterday marked the second anniversary of the start of the uprising that toppled Gadhafi, the death of el-Dersi and nearly 40 other similar slayings are seen as evidence that some in the country are too impatient for a political system that has yet to deliver justice and national reconciliation.

Suspicion in many of the killings of senior security and military officials has fallen on Islamists who were brutally suppressed under Gadhafi. Now, they have become among the most-powerful groups in the new Libya, particularly in the east, with heavily armed militias at their command.

And they are settling old scores themselves, rather than wait for transitional justice — the process of society punishing or forgiving the abuses of the old regime.

Mustafa al-Kufi, a 59-year-old former prisoner and political activist, said the various post-Gadhafi governments and the current parliament are all fearful that if they head down the path of transitional justice, many members of the ruling class would be among those punished for past wrongdoing.

“This is a very pressing issue and a core demand in the street,” said al-Kufi, who spent 12 years in prison.

“We need to know who did what and then ask families of the victims for forgiveness. But since this didn’t take place, violence will continue because there is no justice.”

Like other Arab countries that ousted authoritarian leaders, Libya is now mired in a chaotic and violent transition to a new society. It is plagued by unruly and heavily armed militias that have come under a unified command slowly but remain filled with hard-liners who were in the front line in the war against Gadhafi.

The transition is further complicated by an autonomy movement in the oil-rich east, a central government too weak to exert its authority across the vast desert nation, and heavily armed Islamists who are pressing to fill a power vacuum.

The civil war swept Gadhafi from power, but the bitterness and rage lingers in a country where the authoritarian government imprisoned, tortured and killed its opponents.

Hana al-Gallal, a prominent Benghazi lawyer, said allowing old regime figures to be part of the new order only will fuel more violence.

“Those whose sons were killed, their dreams shattered by the Gadhafi regime, will seek revenge when they see them back in power,” she said. “The result is assassinations.”

Libya’s parliament, the General National Congress, is debating a draft bill that would bar anyone deemed to have had ties to the former regime from state institutions for 10 years.

The bill’s supporters say such measures are needed to allow the ministries and state institutions in the fledgling democracy to develop free of the toxic influence and corruption of the Gadhafi era.

For critics of the bill, however, such a ban perpetuates the Gadhafi regime’s practice of excluding a large bloc of the population from political life.

If implemented, the law would bar a chunk of current lawmakers and government officials, regardless of whether they defected to the rebel side during the civil war.